Yun Ruoyan stared at Wei Hai, waiting for him to continue. With a smile, Wei Hai slowly announced, “You’re a human furn—”

The moment he was about to reveal the secret that Li Mo had kept from her, however, Wei Hai suddenly detected a few strong auras drawing close. He immediately clamped his mouth shut. Yun Ruoyan also detected those auras, and she could clearly distinguish one of them as belonging to Li Mo.

“Well? Say it!” Yun Ruoyan pressed Wei Hai.

However, Wei Hai seemed to be on full alert. He stood up rapidly, dropping the conversation as if it had never happened. “He came so quickly! The Slaughtering King truly cherishes you.”

He unlocked the cage, dragged Yun Ruoyan out, and pulled her toward the mouth of the cave.

“What’s the secret behind my constitution? Tell me!” Yun Ruoyan shouted even as Wei Hai dragged her away, the ground beneath her feet giving way to nothing but darkness. 

“I don’t have time to talk with you! Wait till we escape!” Wei Hai jumped into the abyss, dragging Yun Ruoyan down with her.

“Argh!” Yun Ruoyan cried out, her body floundering as her fear overwhelmed her feigned paralysis. Turning her head, she noticed that Wei Hai’s body was starting to change once more. Ash-gray feathers covered his shoulders, neck, and face. In a few breaths, Wei Hai had turned into the gray bird of before, and Yun Ruoyan was lying on its back.

At the same time, Yun Ruoyan noticed two sword auras appearing in front of her, one of them being Li Mo’s. On the other sword was a black-robed man, whom Yun Ruoyan could recognize as Su Bei. On Su Bei’s sword was another passenger, a middle-aged man in a dragon robe: Li Sheng.

“Yan’er!” Li Mo called out from afar, his voice quavering imperceptibly. During the intervening two days since Yun Ruoyan’s disappearance, Li Mo had felt worry and anxiety unlike anything he had ever experienced. Li Sheng had brought them to various dilapidated hideouts before they had finally discovered Yun Ruoyan’s trail, but she wasn’t safe yet.

When Wei Hai saw the three men waiting for him in front, he immediately began flying in the opposite direction.

“Wei Hai, put Yan’er down, and I’ll give you a clean death!” 

“Wei Hai, you traitor! Get back here!”

Fearing for his life, Wei Hai nevertheless ignored both Li Mo and Li Sheng’s cries, flapping his wings furiously as he tried to leave his pursuers behind.

“Wei Hai, you can’t escape,” Yun Ruoyan advised.

“If I can’t have you, no one will!” Wei Hai replied icily.

“You look like someone who cherishes your own life,” Yun Ruoyan replied, tightly clutching onto the feathers on Wei Hai’s back. Because Wei Hai was flying so rapidly, the wind that buffeted Yun Ruoyan was so powerful that she felt as though she would be blown off his back at any moment. Only by tightly clutching his feathers and lowering her body was she barely able to stay secure.

“Miss Yun, you look as though you cherish your life more than I do,” Wei Hai replied. “If you don’t want to die, hold on even more tightly.”

Wei Hai’s speed rose again by half.

“You bastard!” Yun Ruoyan could clearly hear the Farsighted King’s voice from behind. “Leave Miss Yun behind! How could you betray me?! Don’t you know how loyal your master was? Aren’t you worried of disappointing your master?!” Li Sheng’s voice took on a heart-wrenching tone. “Your master and senior sister, both dead… You’re the only one left, Wei Hai, so how can I bear to see you seek your death? Let Miss Yun go, and I can spare your life!”

Wei Hai snorted. “Aren’t you good at brainwashing others, old man? It’s exactly because my master and senior sister trusted you with their lives that they died! I won’t repeat their mistakes!”

Suddenly, a green flash shot past them, and Li Mo’s figure appeared in front of them. The reason he hadn’t dared to chase Wei Hai too closely was in fear that he would try something reckless and hurt Yun Ruoyan. Li Sheng had told Li Mo that Wei Hai kept poisonous insects all over his body, even ones that were so potent that they could kill a cultivator in one bite near-instantaneously. 

Even though Li Mo had caught up to Wei Hai, he didn’t dare to get too close.

“Damn it, he’s too fast!” Wei Hai shouted, then swerved in another direction.

Another streak of green flew past his eyes, and Li Mo stood in front of him once more. Su Bei had caught up from the back, and the two of them began to hem Wei Hai in.

“Wei Hai, how about we make a deal?” Yun Ruoyan suddenly began.

“What deal?”

“Satisfy two of my requests, and I’ll ask Li Mo to spare your life.”

“Two requests? What are they?”

“First, tell me who the traitor in Kongming Academy is. Second, finish telling me what you were going to say in the cave.”

Wei Hai thought for a moment. “I can’t satisfy your first request, because I also don’t know who the traitor is. All I know is from the Farsighted King himself. As for the second request, if I did tell you, I wouldn’t even be able to die easily.”

The Slaughtering King’s rage knew no bounds. He had already deeply offended him by taking Yun Ruoyan away, and revealing this secret would condemn him for good.

“Wei Hai, let go of Miss Yun! Don’t you want to live?!” Li Sheng cried out.

“Old man, don’t try to trick me,” Wei Hai sneered. “How did you even find out about this hiding spot, anyway?”

His master had once impressed upon him the importance of having secret hiding spots in case of danger, and they had prepared three such hidden locations together. Wei Hai was particularly confident that these locations had remained secret, and this was one of the reasons he had dared to snatch Yun Ruoyan away.

However, Li Mo had only taken two days to find him.

“Don’t you think I’d keep careful track of my accomplices? Even if I weren’t entirely sure where your hideouts, I can at least narrow them down to a few locations. However, your betrayal was indeed beyond my expectations,” Li Sheng sighed. “If you want to court your own death, don’t blame me for not protecting you.”

“In that case, stop talking nonsense and come at me!” Wei Hai yelled, banking sharply and heading in Li Sheng’s direction.

Li Sheng immediately retreated behind Su Bei as Wei Hai turned toward Li Mo, his true target.

“Li Mo, beware of his spiders!” Yun Ruoyan wanted to block Wei Hai from releasing his red-mist spider, but it was already in Li Mo’s face by the time she reacted.

As if he hadn’t heard anything, Li Mo didn’t seem to be on guard at all.

Momentarily, Wei Hai thought that his audacious plan had actually succeeded, but he quickly realized how naive he had been. As the red-mist spider flew toward Li Mo, it was blocked by the shimmering spiritual membrane that had suddenly appeared in front of him.

Li Mo looked at the little red-mist spider, trapped in his shield, as his eyes flashed an icy blue. With a sudden 

Poof!

, the spider exploded into a bloody mist.

Wei Hai’s heart jumped as he quickly sent another spate of poisonous insects at Li Mo, all of which were blocked by his spiritual membrane and quickly burst into nothingness. There were so many insects that the sound of their bodies popping was as if someone had released a firecracker in the air.

“Slaughtering King, I’d like to make a deal with you.” Seeing that even his last-ditch effort had failed, Wei Hai suddenly cooked up another plan.

“I never make deals with anyone.”

“This is a secret regarding Miss Yun that only you and I know,” Wei Hai hurriedly began. “I’m sure you’ll regret not participating in the deal, Your Highness.”

Li Mo frowned as Wei Hai continued, “Spare my life, and I’ll keep this secret for good. Otherwise, I’ll tell Miss Yun her secret now. Based on her personality, once she knows the secret, I’m sure your plans won’t come to fruition!”

Wei Hai’s words turned Li Mo’s dark face even darker, and it so spurred Yun Ruoyan’s curiosity that she tried asking once more, “Wei Hai, what secret?”

As expected, Wei Hai ignored her.

“Alright, I promise not to kill you. Return Yan’er to me immediately,” Li Mo said after a brief moment of thought.

“Slaughtering King, your word binds you. If you break your oath, may lightning erase your existence from this world!”

Li Mo repeated the oath. “Now, are you satisfied?”

Wei Hai nodded, diving toward the ground. Li Mo and Su Bei followed suit, sheathing their swords as they landed, and Wei Hai took on his human form once more.

“This is the antidote.” Wei Hai handed Yun Ruoyan a pill. “It’ll completely remove the effects of the paralytic poison on your body.”

Yun Ruoyan had more or less recovered after consuming the antidote that Qiuqiu had refined, but she still took the antidote that Wei Hai offered her. Although his cultivation wasn’t anything special, he was definitely a skilled poisoner, even able to enhance the poison of venomous insects. It was surely worthwhile to store one of his pills for later research.

After she took the proffered pill, Yun Ruoyan kept it and quickly walked toward Li Mo.

“How did you—impossible! How could you have cured yourself of my paralytic poison without an antidote?!”

Yun Ruoyan could easily have defeated Wei Hai with her cultivation, but she had pretended to remain poisoned! She had been tricking him all this time in order to get him to reveal the secret he had discovered!

As Yun Ruoyan turned back smirking, she found to her shock that Su Bei had crept up to Wei Hai’s back and was about to thrust a sword into Wei Hai’s chest from behind...

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